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Anything else on? Televised hockey still struggling to get beyond die-hard fansPosted: Wednesday June 11, 2003 9:52 AM
Thank goodness the meddling hockey season is over so we can all get back to watching those lumberjack competitions and 1970s world's strongest man challenges. You laugh, but the ratings which ESPN and ABC got for the Stanley Cup finals probably didn't outdraw those middle-of-the-night staples by that much. The Stanley Cup finals received some embarrassing television ratings this postseason before rallying on Monday with a 4.6 national rating for Game 7, making it the most-watched NHL game in the U.S. since Game 6 of the 1974 finals between the Flyers and Bruins. That 4.6 rating is impressive when compared to other hockey games, but that would put Game 7 on par with the average episode of Frasier from this past season, which was just the 32nd ranked prime time program. With the proliferation of satellite television, there are certainly more viewing options in the sporting world and beyond, but the NHL is reaching a code red state.
The first two games of the finals in New Jersey were, by any stretch of the imagination, uninspiring. They were akin to watching a Discovery Channel documentary on the hunting patterns of a lion where you have to sift through 57 minutes of the boring stalking to get three minutes of the fun, devouring-the-prey action. New Jersey's plodding, counterattacking style isn't conducive to winning over new fans on television. But the Devils' unwillingness to sell the game is as much a part of it, too. At least the Mighty Ducks helped hype up Jean-Sebastien Giguere during his amazing postseason run, allowing him to go on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno and demonstrate that he has a charming personality behind his crazy-looking Ducks mask. But how can the NHL even begin to justify the hideous 1.4 and 1.1 ratings for the first two finals games? Those rating were off more than 50 percent from the first two games of the Hurricanes-Red Wings series from last year. Even godawful Push, Nevada pulled a 1.4 average over five airings before getting yanked from the lineup. NBC's Sunday afternoon Arena Football game of the week averaged better than that this season, and the women's NCAA Softball Championship Game fared better, too, earning a 1.6 rating. The USA Network earned a 2.9 rating on a Thursday afternoon for the coverage of Annika Sorenstam's opening round at The Colonial. The numbers improved steadily as the finals wore on, culminating in the excellent numbers for the finale. But overall, the five games on ABC averaged a 2.9 rating, down from the 3.6 rating the three ABC-aired games received in the 2002 finals. The NHL tried to bill the Stanley Cup finals series as New York vs. Los Angeles, but that would be like billing a gamee between Coquitlam and Mississauga as Vancouver-Toronto. You can't blame the league for trying to upsize it, because Anaheim vs. East Rutherford just isn't quite as sexy. And you could likely fit the number of people locally who bothered to watch into Passaic, N.J. (67,861) and Tustin, Calif. (67,504), sub-suburbs of the already suburban homes to the two Cup finalists. ESPN scaled back on its coverage this season after scoring the NBA television contract along with ABC. And those ever-clever spinmeisters at the Worldwide Leader In Sports actually stooped to the indignity of trying to convince American hockey fans that they'd be better off without the NHL on ESPN or ESPN2 four nights a week because the game was getting "overexposed." No, Ashton Kutcher is overexposed. Hockey is in dire straights. I've never quite known what to make of the fact that some people can't see the puck during a televised game. My sardonic, elitist response is generally, "It's the little round black thing moving around against the white background." Now when I say that, I certainly fail to realize that many people who watch didn't play the game growing up and don't understand the flow to the game. For people struggling to follow hockey on television, I urge you to not watch the puck. It may sound silly, but pay attention to what goes on away from the puck for awhile until you learn the skating patterns and some of the strategy of the game. By solely honing in on the puck all the time, you miss many of the things which make hockey such a great game. HDTV is supposed to help televised hockey remarkably, but The Jamie Kennedy Experience may be ahead of the Stanley Cup finals in the ratings by then, so it may be too late to lure some people back. Speaking of shows on the awful WB Network, the NHL might not even be able to get its games on the sixth-rated network when the current ABC/ESPN TV deal expires. There are rumors that the league may negotiate with something called Spike TV -- which is apparently the poorly renamed current incarnation of the former The Nashville Network. While Spike TV is a part of Viacom's CBS/MTV megamedia bundle, it's unlikely that CBS would commit much airtime or resources to hockey having seen what a disaster the current TV deal has been for ABC. Hockey games are infinitely more exciting in person than they are from your living room, which is why the NHL remains a tough sell on television. But the league needs the help of the teams and the players to push the game and keep the ratings up near the Game 7 levels, not at the laughable marks from earlier in the postseason. Otherwise Jamie Kennedy is poised to become a bigger star than Jamie Langenbrunner, and that would just be a travesty. Jon A. Dolezar covers the NHL for SI.com. |
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